Undertale Goes to Heaven
by SaintHeartwing
Summary: Sans and his friends have tragically died during a horrific genocidal campaign from a human. Now that they're in Heaven, you might think it's all over. Well...not exactly. They're not allowed to go in, and must now answer for all the awful things they've done over the many timelines. Can they argue their case and earn a second chance?
1. Welcome to Heav-Nevermind

He hadn't seen the "friendliness pellets" that had struck him in fury and denial from behind. But he'd heard a loud, hateful, torn scream. A mixture of denial, of confusion and anger.

Despite everything, Flowey had, deep down, still felt a semblance of caring for his dear friend Chara, who now possessed an innocent form. And seeing her tossing the knife away...crying in front of the skeletal comedian that was Sans...it had made Flowey think only one thing. Chara had just been playing this whole time. She never would have hurt him. It'd just been part of the game.

But now she'd been killed. Sans had let the posessed form of young Frisk get close...and then impaled the child through the back with a smirk and a cry of **"GEEEEEEET DUNKED ON!"**

And with that, Sans's own life had ended, Frisk flopping forth into a pile of dust, hearing Chara screaming in a mixture of anger and joy, satisified at least in the knowledge that if she went down...she took everyone else with her.

And then there he was. Sans now stood before large, golden, pearly gates on a plain of fluffy white clouds, as an expanse of a thousand stars in a beautiful starlight sky flickered high above him. An angel with deeply piercing green eyes was standing next to a man in a white beard and white robe, the green-and-gold-clothed angel whispering to the white-bearded man behind the ivory podium he stood at, guarding the entrance into what Sans knew could only be...

 **"this is...is this it? i'm in Heaven? really?"** he asked, tilting his head to the side, looking rather impressed as soft music drifted out from behind the gates, and milky galaxies twisted high above his skeletal cranium. Smiling happily, he walked towards the podium, not seeing the other people waiting behind him who were all nervously rubbing the back of their necks, or muttering to each other. **"heya. the name's Sans. sans the skeleton. can I go in?"**

"I'm sorry, but no." Saint Peter said as he sighed, holding out the enormous book that he was writing on behind the podium. "I just got very clear instruction, even for you. And Mr. Sans, I'm sorry to say this, but neither you NOR your friends can go in. We have much to discuss."

 **"whuh?"** Sans turned around, eyes widening. A fish-like woman monster with red hair, a dinosaur-esque monster in a labcoat, a goat-like monster with a lovely white and purple robe and soft blue eyes, a faintly spectral figure that looked very much like a flamboyant robot...

WOOP. And just like that, as if snapping into existence, there was a large, bearded goat-like monster with a crown on his head who felt over his body, cringing. "That was...why did that flower do that?! How...how strange."

 **"lil' bastard got you too, huh?"** Sans sighed before the angel that had been speaking to St. Peter whacked him over his head. **"ow!"**

"No SWEARING. This is Heaven. And you need to make a good impression! If you want to get in, you must argue your case before the Heavenly court, and I shan't have my clients ruining their chances by being argumentative vulgarians!" The angel insisted in a voice that was both faintly childlike, yet so very, very old.

 **"why a court case? how come we can't go in?"**

"You can't think of at least...oh...SIX good reasons why you can't?" The angel inquired, Sans flinching. In an instant, it all came flooding back. A hundred different timelines, a hundred different possibilities was all being smushed into his brain as his friends quietly watched him process what THEY'D had to process, Asgore soon getting the same information through his crowned head as he hung it in shame.

Six Human kids. All dead. Their souls ripped from them by the monsters to break the barrier and free them from the Underground to commit genocide against humanity for what had been done over a millenia ago.

 **"...oh."** Sans mumbled. **"but-but look, we were desperate to get out. we needed those kids's souls to-"**

"It's not YOUR job to decide what happens to a person's soul. It's theirs and God's alone." St. Peter warned him. "And that foolish "ends justify the means" mindset is the very thing that led your people to be sealed away Underground. For the humans, their ends of keeping their people safe from monsters who regularly stole human souls to gain power justified the means of exiling you all away after a horrific and long, bloody series of battles. As your eldest brother Gaster can attest to."

Sans flinched. Oh, geez. So that's why his brother had had those lines over his face. He'd heard rumors, of course. That lines running from your eyes meant you'd absorbed a human soul, obtained what they had: DETERMINATION. But he'd never believed them.

But now...

"The good news is that someone is willing to speak on your behalf." The angel offered. "We've got a wonderful witness for the defense. Though the prosecution is...considerable. We'll have a hundred possibilities to stack up against. A hundred ways things could and did play out. Every possibility will be on display, and you must convince the Heavenly Host that you deserve a second chance."

"Wait a minute." Undyne suddenly remarked, the fish-woman speaking up. "Something isn't adding up. You say we all gotta answer for everything we did in all these possible timelines and junk, but surely we didn't ALL do awful things in EVERY single one."

"There's only one of you that DIDN'T kill anyone and who's morals remained consistant and noble from the start. One who truly did deserve heavenly bliss." St. Peter admitted, their angelic defense lawyer nodding as he jabbed his thumb at a small part of the gate that was down a ways, and they all turned to see Papyrus the skeleton in his jogging outfit, racing alongside a large plethroa of angels who were all running along a golden pathway.

"OKAY, BOYS AND GIRLS! WIGGLE THAT FLAB! TIME TO JOG 100 LAPS, HOOTING ABOUT HOW GREAT THINGS ARE! A ONE! A TWO! A THREE!"

 _ **"Everything is awesooooome! Everything is cool when you're part of a team!"**_ The angels all sang out, racing by the gate with Papyrus as Sans blinked stupidly for a moment, then shrugged.

 **"...yeah. makes sense."**


	2. The Chara-cter Witness

The enormous courtroom had risen up around them outside of the gates of Heaven, and the soft starlight of the night sky above twinkled gently. It beamed soft starlight down into the open roof of the pearly walls of the court, a large desk for all of Sans and his friends to sit at on one end, the prosecution's on the other side as a host of various humans, monsters, angels and-no. No way. No freakin' way.

Sans's eyes went wide as he really, REALLY saw who was over at the prosecutor's side, Toriel's hands flying to her mouth as Asgore let out a horrified gasp, Undyne's face becoming cold and cruel, gritting her teeth as a brown-haired young girl sat across from them. She was wearing a long-sleeve green shirt with yellow stripes running through it, her face rosy red with deep brown, almost red eyes, and had a delightful smile on her features, a smile so unmistakably HERS.

Chara. The First Human. And she was mockingly waving at them, wiggling her fingers as she did so. "Greetings." She cheerily remarked. "How is everyone?"

"Ch-Chara? My child, you're...you are the prosecution?" Toriel inquired, looking positively horrified.

"Oh, of course, mother. It's natural. Demons have always acted as prosecutors in this kind of procedure. Even Satan's very name means "accuser"." Chara said, putting a hand on her chest. "And don't think I'll be going easy on you. I've SOOOO much to talk about." She said, wagging a finger back and forth as Undyne's hand reached up to her eyepatch-covered eye, glowering coldly at the one who'd taken her left eye away oh-so-long ago.

"Chara, don't you remember all we did for you?" Asgore asked softly, Chara's face turning quiet and cold.

"I remember everything. But I haven't forgiven my dear "brother" for ruining the plan I had. Everything would have worked out fine if he hadn't flaked out." She muttered. "...I'm not your little girl anymore. Don't try to appeal to my heart. I don't have one anymore."

"Like you ever **did**." Undyne muttered, Chara giving off a big ol' grin.

"Why, Ms. Undyne, I've got good news for you. You're the first witness for the prosecution. So won't you have something to look forward to. But of course, the Defense gets to call the first witness." Chara said, waving her hand as the angel from before opened up the set of double doors to the opening of the court, Sans's eyes going wide as he stared at the human who was there. Part of him flinched, another part soared, and a third part shamefully looked down, several of his friends all having similar reactions as the soft-faced Asian American child Frisk made his way to their table, the angel nodding gently as Chara clapped her hands. "I see you found them. I assure you that despite our previous business transactions in various timelines, there's NO conflict of interest in this case, your honor."

The judge nodded quietly, the long-haired Jewish man with faintly dark skin nodding, resting his hands in his lap as his soft face looked down at Frisk. "Are they prepared?"

"They are, sir." The angel said.

"Very well, Remiel. You may call them to the witness stand." The judge said, snapping his fingers as a large chair shot up to his left. "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

"I couldn't lie even if I wanted to. Not in front of you, after all." Frisk said, his soft, childish voice echoing through the walls of the court as The Judge nodded sagely, Jesus Christ smiling gently back.

"Very well. You may commence with your questions." Jesus told the angelic defense for the Underground's team.

"Frisk..." Remiel paced back and forth, hands behind his back. "What can you tell me about the monsters of the Underground? How would you describe them?"

"Really nice once you get to know them." Frisk said with a firm nod of his brown-haired head, the Asian American "half-breed" smiling warmly at the court. "People are people no matter where ya go."

"Do you think that they're...BAD people?" Remiel wanted to know, raising an eyebrow up. "After all, they did attack you many times over."

"No, I don't." Frisk said as he shook his head back and forth."There were times I fought back, and times when I even killed them. But I don't think of them as bad folks. Even though I've done some bad things too, I don't think of myself as a bad guy. I don't think most anyone in the world's a bad person, cuz nobody WANTS to really do bad things, they just do them cuz they're trying to help someone, or cuz they think someone hurt them or they feel they deserve something nice."

Remiel placed his hands together, thinking about this as he calmly nodded. "And do you feel it's fair for you to be blamed for the actions you did when you were **possessed**?" He inquired, pulling out a small knife and placing it down on the witness stand Frisk was standing at, walking over to Sans's place at the defense table. "Time after time, that knife cut through monster flesh at your hand, a hand guided by Chara over there."

Undyne flinched, looking away as Sans covered his face with one hand. The memories and knowledge of multiple timelines had hit him hard. He hadn't known, he didn't KNOW Frisk had been totally possessed by the time he'd gotten to the judgment hall. He didn't know, if he'd known-

A whisper in his ear. What? What was the angel ask-

 **"you serious?!"** Sans whispered, giving a glower at Remiel as Remiel nodded sagely.

"So tell me, Frisk. Would you think it fair to be judged for something that someone else made you do?" Remiel then inquired loudly, Frisk shaking his head back and forth as Sans cringed, one eye glowing a faint, icy blue color as he leveled a hand at Frisk.

"No, I...I..." Frisk began to murmur, his body surrounded in a blue light, picking up the knife, his eyes wide with horror as his arms swayed back and forth, and then he shot forward, rushing against his will at Chara, who leapt back in shock...

The knife inches from Chara's face before Sans released his hold, Frisk flopping to the floor, Chara giving a dark glower at Remiel. "What the?!"

"Now, now. You can't blame Frisk. After all...he didn't want to run over there. It wasn't HIM moving his body. So it really isn't his fault...is it?" Remiel quietly inquired as Frisk panted a bit, heading back over to the witness stand and putting the knife down, shuddering as Chara smiled coldly and raised an eyebrow up.

"Might I speak to the witness now and question them?"

"You're welcome to. The defense has no further questions." Remiel said, Chara dusting themselves off as they walked in front of Frisk and cleared their throat.

"The first time you killed in various timelines...some by accident, some by choice...that was when I was awakened. Within your heart, did you, or did you not, hear me reach out to you? Call out, offering to help you in this world of Kill or Be Killed?"

"Yes. You did."

"So you CHOSE...to let me in. Am I not, in a way, like a kind of drug? Like alcohol? You don't blame the beer when someone gets drunk and crashes a car, your honor. You blame the person that drank too much, foolishly indulging before getting behind the wheel. They ought to have known better." Chara said, his tone accusatory and cold before Sans rose up, slamming his hands down on the table.

 **"that is enough outta you!"** He roared out. **"he's just a KID!"**

"Oh, perhaps you're right and as a child he WOULDN'T know better. But you know who would know better? All of you." Chara said, Sans flinching as Chara turned back to Frisk. "Isn't it true almost every single one of the monsters at the defense table attempted to and even DID kill you at least once? Or in the case of Alphys, who's CREATION almost and did kill you several times over? Even _Toriel_ accidentally slayed you."

"Yeah, that, um, that did happen." Frisk sheepishly admitted as he hung his head, holding both sides in his hands. "It was an accident, they didn't really mean it-"

"But didn't they? After all, Sans himself had told you that if not for the promise he made to Toriel, you would have been dead where you stood the second you got outside the Ruins. He would have willingly turned you into a greasy stain on the forest pathway if not for that promise." Chara asked, getting closer to Frisk. Closer.

CLOSER.

"Worse still is Undyne, who ignored your pleas and begging for mercy, refusing to accept it, and pitilessly slaughtering you, a mere child, time and time again? Worse still, did you, a mere child, not have to jump through hoop after hoop to get grown adult monsters to spare you instead of them simply making the concious choice to NOT murder a child and take his soul?" Chara demanded to know. "Why should YOU, a mere CHILD, have to encourage monsters, hug them, feed them flakes, flex, do ALL of these things just to get a monster to SPARE you...why should you, a mere CHILD, have to take all the responsibility and the monsters show NONE for what they did? Why did THEY NOT KNOW BETTER?"

"W-Well..." Frisk stammered. "Th-the monsters...they've been taught since they were little to hate humans. If all you know is hate, then that's pretty much all you did. And..." He frowned. "Papyrus was different! He never _once_ killed me! He always held back! Didn't even kill me by accident! He's proof they can be good!"

"Why couldn't your friends follow his example?" Chara asked. "Are you trying to argue they had no choice?"

"We DIDN'T have a choice." Alphys spoke up. "I-I hate to be contrarian, but the barrier needed at least seven human souls or an equivalent to be broken. It would take a human soul and a monster soul just to get THROUGH."

"But is that actually _true_ , Frisk?" Chara inquired. "Is it true that you needed a monster and a human soul to go through the barrier...or did you get through the barrier without a monster soul?"

Frisk bit his lip. His head slowly rose up.

"Yes. I got through without a monster soul."

Everyone gasped, the courtroom buzzing with shocked gasps and murmurs and whispers, Toriel looking in confusion at Asgore, Alphys gaping in shock, Undyne blinking in surprise as Sans looked at Alphys, Mettaton trying to come up with something to say before, at last, he broke the silence.

"I don't know HOW he can say that. After all, we studied the barrier for years. Surely we would have figured out if the barrier didn't require a monster and human soul!"

"Did you ever actually **test** it with any of the humans who came down?" Chara quietly asked. "Because Frisk went through the barrier several times over after fighting a transformed, monstrous flower that had absorbed the six human souls. Isn't that true?"

"Yes, Flowey got...he got big. REAL big." Frisk said, all of the defense table listening intently to Frisk's story as he held his arms out wide. "His body was this hulking, monstrous THING,giant rose thorned arms and TV screen for a face with a second face and a huge, split-open, gaping maw beneath! There were these...these THINGS connected to his back, and the Six Souls were stuck in these circular things around his head, and I had to fight him! And when I beat him, then I walked through the purple exit door and everything went white before...there I was." Frisk said, gesturing around at the court to illustrate how he'd seen the expanse of the outside stretched out. "I was back outside."

"And did you absorb a monster soul? Did you kill a monster to get that?"

"No. I **couldn't** anyhow. Asgore's soul had been shattered by Flowey and Flowey didn't HAVE a soul. And I didn't absorb any of the Six Souls, humans can't **absorb** human souls, and I know the Six Souls didn't break the barrier, the Monsters didn't follow after me to the surface. They vanished after beating Flowey and helping me, so...I got through the barrier just fine without a monster."

"Then..." Toriel blinked, a horrible thought coming to her, her soft blue eyes widening. "Then...then if humans could always go in and out of the barrier, why tell us that it would take a human and monster soul? That's what the magicians who sealed us in said! That a human and monster was needed to pass through, and it would take seven humans and their souls to shatter the barrier! Why would they say that?" She asked aloud. "What was the point, if it wasn't TRUE?"

Chara smiled. It was not a nice smile.

"All you would have had to do was treat the children right and not kill them, and they would have had to merely pass through the barrier all at once to break it. Why, a monster holding a child's HAND could have passed through. The barrier existed to prove that if a human fell down to where you were...you'd show mercy. It was a test."

She turned away from them, shaking her head back and forth. "And you failed. Many...many...times."

"But none of that would have happened had the humans not sealed us down there to begin with! It doesn't EXCUSE what they did! We MONSTERS were the wronged party!" Undyne insisted.

"Luckily there's someone we can call on who can shed some light on why you were all sealed down there. Several someones. Sans, you might have been too young, as was Papyrus, to remember what life had been like on the surface. But your elder brother Gaster? Mr Asgore, Ms. Toriel? You will be the prosecution's next called witnesses after Undyne. I'm going to give you a chance, Undyne." Chara said with a smirk. "A chance to prove yourself. To prove the motivations of you and your friends truly were pure and noble."

Undyne gripped the table she sat behind, cringing as she hung her head. Ice cold fear was shooting through her. She felt sick to her stomach, as timeline upon timeline crashed into her. She remembered EVERY awful thing she'd done, and she had no idea how she was going to-

"Don't worry."

Remiel's soft hand on hers, the angel smiling warmly back.

"I want you to think about your family for this next part. Because there's someone I'll call up soon after who really cares about you." Remiel intoned tenderly. "Someone who'll make for a great character witness."

Not too far away, a figure stiffened, and he suddenly ripped off his t-shirt, exposing his battle body beneath. Papyrus rested his fists on his bony hips, his black eye sockets gleaming in the sunlight that shimmered down upon the golden streets of Heaven as he stood up from the ice cream store he'd stopped his jogging troop at. No time to enjoy some soft serve. No, no.

"SOMEONE NEEDS MY HELP!" He proclaimed, leaping out the window with a KRA-KRASH as several of his fellow joggers chuckled a bit, one glancing left and right.

"Am I the only one who hears that "Cowboy Bebop" song "Ballad of the Fallen Angels" every time he leaps out the window?"


	3. The Defense is filled with DETERMINATION

When the prosecution had informed Undyne that they'd be playing back video of every single fight she'd done with Frisk, she'd naturally asked the question 'How'? She was, after all, pretty sure Alphys didn't have a camera directly in the area that she'd fought the kid.

But then HE had appeared, making his way down the court hall and approaching the Judge's bench. Long, flowing black alchemical robe with the symbol of the Monsters on the back, lines running up and down his deep black eye sockets, hands with holes in the center of his palms...there was no mistaking him. Here in the Heavenly realm, all was made clear, and all secrets were told. This was WingDing Aster, or, as he was better known, Gaster, kin to Sans and Papyrus.

He gave Sans a quiet, sad little smile before bowing before the judge. "Your Lord."

"Please, no standing on ceremony, W.D. I trust you're going to demonstrate how you've been able to record everything in the Underground?" Jesus had calmly asked, resting his hands in his lap as Gaster tapped the side of his own head.

"Much like you, I see everything and know everything that happens in the Underground. I was everywhere and nowhere. And I could hear you telling stories about me to Frisk, Sans. You know...it's rude to talk about someone who's listening." He then smiled a bit more warmly and put a hand on his bony chest. "Of course, it's also rude to eavesdrop, so who am I to judge?" He laughed.

"Would you please just show us the footage?" Chara remarked with a groan, rolling her eyes as Gaster nodded, tapping his head as a screen was wheeled out in front of everyone to see, sitting right below Jesus's podium as he calmly nodded, not caring if he saw the footage. He had, after all, already seen everything. This was for their benefit. Focusing intensely, rays of light shot forth from Gaster's eye sockets and like a projector, a scene began to unfold on the screen.

Frisk stood there, below an immense rocky hill, looking up at almost blood-red skies as the red-haired form of the dark-blue skinned fish woman that was Undyne pointed accusingly at him. "You know what would be really helpful to everyone!? IF YOU WERE DEAD!"

"Well that's not very nice." Frisk had said with a pout, Undyne blushing from the witness stand, sinking lower and lower into her chair as more of the footage played out, Gaster's voice calling out

"If any of you have weak constitutions, I recommend you close your eyes, because the next ten seconds get...unsettling." He remarked.

"No more running away! HERE I COME!" Undyne had roared out then, leaping down, spear held high and...

Impaling Frisk clear through. Undyne had stared in shock, scarcely able to believe the kid had seriously not even TRIED to take a step back or run away or anything. She looked down in shock, the spear having shot right through Frisk's head as she cringed, mouth hanging open a bit before...

"...well, shit. That was easy."

And it only got more and more damning from there. The grin on Chara's face was the work of demons as time and time again, Undyne would attack Frisk in the footage. Pleas for mercy and attempts to spare her went unheeded. Over and over, her spears would shoot through Frisk, forcing them to their knees. Time and time again they'd be impaled through the chest or stomach, sometimes even the head, making the gallery all collectively cringe. And just when it looked like it couldn't get any more vicious, then Frisk had said this.

"I don't want to fight you. I don't want to fight ANYONE. We don't have to do this."

Undyne had gripped her spear tightly, Frisk's battered and bruised form staggering back and forth before her, flimsily clutching the green spear she'd tossed him before she spat on the ground, slightly "harrumphing". "UGH. I thought that if I fought you like this, it'd show how powerful monsters really could be. But that's it! I'm done playing fair, done going easy on you! I'M NOT YOUR KINDERGARTEN TEACHER!" She roared out before racing over to the side of the mountainous hill...

Grabbing hold of something that made Frisk "eep".

"That is, unless your Kindergarten teacher does THIS!" Undyne had proclaimed, tossing a boulder right at Frisk's frail form.

"Then came the boulders. So...so many boulders." Gaster murmured, cringing as Undyne was now totally sunken into her witness stand, barely visible as Chara sniggered with delightful, devilish glee.

"You realize this looks INCREDIBLY bad for you." Jesus quietly asked of Undyne as he sighed, pinching the space between his eyes and shaking his head. "You were hurtling boulders at a ten year old boy that you KNEW was a ten year old boy, who was refusing to fight back and begging you to stop. How can you justify a duel with a child?"

Undyne moaned from the witness stand as Chara wagged a finger back and forth. "It got worse."

Indeed. Because now Frisk had decided to actually try to wear Undyne down in the hopes that she'd tire herself out. Timeline after timeline was being played out of him waiting for her to get pooped. In fact, an entire hour passed by in one very notable timeline, and now they were watching a kind of real fighting match unfold. Sans was selling tickets made of toilet paper as huge swathes of monsters had come to watch the kid continuously dodging Undyne's attacks, her spears being chucked through the air with the ferocity of a whirlwind, suplexing boulders and kicking them at Frisk as he leapt away. Time and time again he'd avoid her attacks as people whooped and cheered, Sans soon handing out hot dogs. Or rather, a water sausage in a bun.

HEY. Vegetables are good for you.

But then Frisk had opened his mouth and said "Maybe we should take a break". That had made Undyne snap. She started to hyperventilate, picking up a boulder, body shaking back and forth...dropping the boulder on her foot. Bouncing up and down, howling in pain, the various monsters in the crowd found it hilarious that after all this time, the only thing she'd managed to hit was herself. Wheeling on them with a dark glint in her yellow eye, she'd screamed "I'LL KILL YOU BITCHES".

 **"we all thought this was hilarious."** Sans admitted.

"Oh, it was. But you know what wasn't? When she tossed a boulder at the crowd and flattened Jerry." The judge sighed.

"Speak for yourself, we STILL thought it was hilarious."

Undyne was now so deeply sunk into her witness stand that she was flopped onto the floor below, curling up and almost sobbing. But even now? Even now it was going to get worse. Because Frisk, in his desperation, FINALLY decided to fight back.

With the steel-binder notebook he'd picked up, a memento from one of the previous children who'd come before, he had rushed forward at Undyne, whacking her across the face, knocking her back as the crowd gasped in shock. Frisk had held it high, panting a bit. "I told you to STOP! Just STOP!" He yelled out. "I don't wanna hurt you, but I won't let you keep hurting me!"

Undyne's smile had been horrifying. Now she felt vindicated. Now she saw the warrior in Frisk come out. And she'd launched herself at him. But even now, it wasn't enough. When Frisk wanted to, he could be a combat beast. He ducked and dived, dipping below her strikes, whacking her again and again with the binder, just trying to wear her down. He KNEW that many monsters, if you hit them hard enough, would run away. He'd done it once or twice with some of the more jerky ones, giving them bops on the nose or kicking them in the rear. A good whack would make them go running off, meaning he could Spare them. He didn't do it often, and in many timelines, he didn't do it at all. But he knew it worked. And why wouldn't it work here?

But then disaster. A critical strike made her armor crack, and she'd flopped to her knees, her body shuddering and shaking, her voice a throaty, pale whisper as Frisk reeled back, the monsters in the crowd now silent as the grave.

"You may be stronger than I thought, but...no. I...I won't let this be where it ends. I...won't...die." Undyne said, as an unusual color began to drift over her singular good eye, an unusual, almost otherworldly color. The pupil became a powerful, burning red, the iris pitch black as she laughed in a fashion that was psychotic. "NO! NO, I won't die! Alphys...Papyrus...Asgore...everyone is counting on me to protect them!"

"Undyne..." Frisk had murmured softly, his Soul turning green before him as Undyne swiped her spear and she grinned.

"So you're! You're gonna have to try harder than that!" She laughed. "Humans might be determined, but I'm determined too! _Determined to end this!_ "

"...Undyne, you..." Frisk murmured, twisting his body around, the green spear in his hands twirling as he blocked the flurry of magic, icy-blue spears that launched his way...seeing Undyne's feet were beginning to shimmer and shake. A distinctly melting quality was coming over them.

Anthony stared at her, looking mournfully at her. "You aren't gonna survive if you keep fighting me."

"I won't die! I WON'T DIE!" Undyne exclaimed, smiling as though nothing was wrong, more spears shooting forward, her body wavering...the spears now getting slower and slower. "S-See how strong we monsters are when we believe in ourselves?!" She demanded, more and more of her body fading.

"Undyne..." Frisk whispered, his tormentor's form almost utterly gone. Nothing but her head was...

And soon even that was beginning to fade away, only a single, tiny little spear racing towards him so...so slowly. Frisk bobbed the thing away, the monsters in the crowd watching in hushed tones, Frisk's expression one of horror and regret as Undyne struggled to stay erect. "Miss, please, s-stop, y-you're sick, you you need HELP..."

"...Alphys...this is what I was afraid of..." Undyne murmured out. "This is why I never told you..."

"Miss Undyne, please, you need to get help." Frisk had begged, trying to take a step forward before Undyne rose up, her form shifting, turning more solid as she let out a pained roar.

"No! Not yet! NGAAAAH! **I WON'T DIE!** " She snarled, holding her arms up high, fists clenched...

Frisk gasped in horror. She was MELTING. Her form was drizzling down, sloughing into nothingness, dissolving away before his eyes.

"I won't die! I won't die...I...w-won't...die..." She gurgled out, as if speaking underwater. _"I...won't..."_

And with that...she dissolved into dust, leaving behind a sobbing Frisk as he collapsed to his knees and openly wept, the monsters in the crowd silently looking on before, one by one, heading away. Sans quietly hung his head, then put up his hoodie, walking down the road as the footage ended, and everyone in the court turned to look at Undyne, who had risen back up and was now covering her face with her hands.

"All this...because you wouldn't accept mercy from a ten year old." Chara quietly asked. "You could have literally done nothing. But you chose to keep attacking and you forced them to defend themselves. Remind me again who, in your species's mind, is supposed to be the true monster?"

Undyne had nothing to say. Frisk bit his lip, seeing Chara smirking in pride before Gaster "he-hemmed". "Um, I do believe that the Defense has a character witness to bring forth in regards to Ms. Undyne, who can speak about her past just as I can?"

"Oh, yes, that's right. You knew her as a child, did you not? And you knew her mother?" Chara inquired. "Where IS Undyne's mother?"

"I CAN ANSWER THAT." Papyrus's loud, rather high-pitched voice rang out as he strode into the court, smiling happily, racing over to Undyne and giving her a big, ol, noogie. He knew she liked it, and the smile on her face that slowly stretched across her mouth made it clear it was working.

"Heh. You always know how to cheer me up." Undyne whispered, Papyrus then patting her on the back.

"THE GREAT PAPYRUS ALWAYS STRIVES TO BE COMFORTING AND PLEASANT. PAPYRUS. HE SMELLS LIKE THE MOON." He added, putting a hand on his chest as Undyne let him sit in the witness chair as she made her way back to the defense table, their lawyer standing up and clearing his throat.

"Papyrus, tell me. Why was Undyne's mother and father never around?"

"OH, HER FATHER HAD DIED DURING A SKIRMISH BACK BEFORE THE WAR REALLY STARTED. HE NEVER GOT TO KNOW UNDYNE. AND FROM WHAT I REMEMBER, GIVING BIRTH TO HER KILLED MS. MELUSINE." Papyrus confessed with a nod of his head. "SHE HAD HER MOM'S EYES. WELL, SHE'S ONLY GOT ONE OF THEM NOW BECAUSE MS. CHARA TOOK THE OTHER ONE OUT DURING A PRACTICE SESSION."

"That's riiiight, Ms. Chara had been asked to do practice dueling with Undyne because Asgore thought it was a good idea she learn to defend herself, correct?" Remiel the angel inquired politely as he paced back and forth in front of the witness stand. "However did it happen?"

"SHE SWUNG TOO HIGH AND...IT WAS VERY STICKY." Papyrus confessed, cringing a bit. "ASGORE KEPT SAYING THAT. VERRRRY STICKY. BUT SHE NEVER ASKED TO HAVE IT HEALED."

"No. It only made me cooler." Undyne said, pointing at the eyepatch she now had over her left eye before opening it up and plopping out something onto her open palm. "Plus I keep things in there. Mint?" She added, giving Alphys a Wintergreen candy as several of the people in the gallery cringed, a few almost vomiting into nearby wastebaskets.

"Was growing up without a mother...hard for you?" Remiel asked as Undyne immediately flinched and looked away and to the side. "After all, even Frisk had a mother for a short time before she was tragically taken from the world. Even Chara had parents, as neglectful as they could be. What was it like?"

"I...I got what I needed, I...I was fine." She muttered. "Or at least, I thought I was. What I remember was I had a lot inside me and I wanted to get it out. So I'd go picking fights with people. But even Gerson, at his age, could clean my clock in ten seconds cuz I was so hotheaded."

"That's understandable." Remiel insisted as he walked over to Undyne and gently took her hand as she looked into his deep, DEEP green eyes. "When you were born, you essentially claimed your mother's soul. You inherited her drive, her passion, and unfortunately, a great deal of her anger problems. It's common among your species for the mother to die giving birth, and the father's meant to manage the child's inherited traits so that their own personality can gleam forth. But you were left to manage everything on your own, with a streak of violence you couldn't control, and didn't understand."

He let go of her hands, turning to Papyrus. "Was she angry at Chara for what happened?"

"OH, SHE WAS SOOOO MAD. I DON'T THINK SHE EVER GOT OVER IT."

"So you have a girl with violence and anger issues, growing up without any parents, being taught every day in schools about how terrible humans were and how they'd sealed her kind away, and the one human she got to know took her eye out." Remiel reasoned. "Don't you think, all things considered, it's amazing she didn't become a serial killer?"

"Oh, c'mon." Chara snorted. "Are you trying to absolve her of all responsibility? No one put a gun to any of the monster's heads and made them try to kill any of the children that fell down. Not to mention the war was pretty much the monster's fault. As Gaster can attest to. Were you not, after all, the Royal Scientist of the Monster Kingdom? And did you not absorb human souls even BEFORE you were assigned to investigate the phenomenon?"

Gaster cringed as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Y-Yes." He admitted. "It-it's complicated. We skeletons aren't...natural monsters. The truth is, all of us used to be human...and used to be from another world."

Everyone in the gallery, save for the judge, Jesus, gasped. Chara smirked a bit, nodding her head. "Go on."

"A world that sees everything that happens in this one. A world where many are as authors writing a book, and you are all the characters in a story. We found a way to inject ourselves into these stories and we tried to guide them towards happy endings." Gaster admitted. "But doing that turns us into...this." Gaster confessed. "So much of a change that we don't even remember where we came from. But I remembered because I wasn't ONE person but...two. Two made into one. Both of us had wanted to try and have a big impact on this world and to make things right, to do wonderful things. We disagreed on how to do it, but we wanted to help people."

Soon HE was the one sitting in the witness chair as he rested his hands in his lap and hung his bony head. "So I came into this world not as one soul, but two, two as one. Merged into a singular being. Because of that, I had these lines, as evidence of the two human souls that were used to "make" me." He said, pointing at his face, and the line that ran up from his right eye, and the one that ran down from his left. "The King, Asgore's father, had one of his own. He'd claimed it was a scar, but after he'd ordered me to do tests on human souls to learn if the old legends and hushed whispers about absorbing them were true...I realized his true nature and that of my own. The lines are a symbol of absorbed human souls."

"So there were hushed whispers...was absorbing human souls so commonplace in the olden days?" Chara inquired.

"We had history plaques detailing what a monster with human souls absorbed into them looked like." Gaster sheepishly confessed. "Humans didn't want to believe it at first, but then my...they found out about my experiments." He remarked quietly, hanging his head in shame. "My long research on humans and what happened to me when I killed them and took their souls, it...it led me to uncover EXP and LV. And me having near-godly powers was the only thing that saved me from being utterly erased from time and space and instead, just got me scattered across it. If I'd had one less soul, I would truly be gone."

"So the humans had feared monsters had been absorbing human souls to gain power, and the fear was true." Chara accused coldly. "King Asgore's own father had been ordering tests to prove it so? It wasn't mere scuttlebutt, old wives tales?"

A shake of the head "No. It wasn't." Gaster confessed. "And it haunted me every day I was underground. I wanted to go back!" He insisted, and they saw tears springing to his hollow eyes. "To prevent that from ever happening! It's why I began studying the time-space continuum with Alphys and Sans, I wanted to go back in time, make it so it never HAPPENED. We all would have been so much happier, but then there was the accident and..." He held his head in his hands. "...a doctor, a scientist, needs to have integrity. They need to own up to the terrible things they've done, and the mistakes they've made. I had been ordered to experiment with souls, and I should have said no. If you're going to blame anyone for what happened, blame me. Had I not done that, the humans would probably have never learned of our sins, and the war wouldn't have happened."

"They would have learned eventually. My father never got over losing his wife the same way Melusine lost her husband." King Asgore confessed from the defense table. "He couldn't let go of that. He couldn't forgive. Had you said no, he probably would have done it himself anyhow."

"Now, now, aren't you the one insisting the humans bear no responsibility? They did after all seal the monsters away Underground! A horrific, bloody war occurred and many innocent lives were lost!" Remiel protested angrily. "How can you insist the monsters bear responsibility for what they did, but not the humans?"

"What would stop someone like Sans or Undyne from walking into a bank vault?" Chara asked, Sans shrugging.

 **"dunno about Undyne, but I'm too lazy to walk in. would probably shortcut my way in, but still...I think the security guards and the guns might do that?"**

"We have guns NOW, of course, so it's more even. What would stop you from entering a normal human's home in the times when you were living among humans in dual kingdoms? What would stop you from entering a castle and killing every member of the royal family? Yes, surely the humans would be able to stand up against beings that can throw boomerangs of ice, fireballs and laser cannons with their...SPEARS." Chara said, sticking her finger in her mouth, gagging. "They would have stood no chance. Nothing would have stopped you from slaughtering them."

"You can't blame people for what they MIGHT do." Remiel insisted.

"No, but that doesn't mean you don't take precautions. With great power there must also come great responsibility. They had all the power and none of the responsibility. There would have been no recourse for humans if monsters lashed out. The only thing humans had on their side were numbers and the seven human magicians." Chara reasoned.

"BUT TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A **RIGHT**." Papyrus spoke up, everyone turning to him. "YES, WHAT WE DID WAS WRONG, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN WHAT THE HUMANS DID WAS RIGHT EITHER. HURTING OTHER PEOPLE BECAUSE YOU'RE HURT IS JUST SPREADING MORE PAIN. YOU CAN'T FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE, YOU JUST SET MORE THINGS ON FIRE."

"It ain't like humans are an utterly innocent species either." Undyne muttered. "I've read up on stuff like the Holocaust."

"Th-that isn't really accurate." Alphys confessed, everyone astonished as she spoke up. "It isn't like animals don't do terrible things. Do-Dolphins will rape each other. Ant colonies enslave other ant colonies. The cuckoo bird, sh-she'll put her baby in another bird's nest, and that chick will PUSH the other baby birds out so it can get all the food! Animals are pretty awful to each other. And besides, we've been pretty mean to other monsters. Gryftrot kept getting vandalized, the teens in Snowdin were always acting awful to the adults and bossing folks around, and of course we can't forget JERRY."

"UGHHHHH. JERRY." All the monsters groaned at once, save for the UFO-shaped, three-legged monster himself who "harrumphed" as he looked away and folded his arms over his chest.

"We do kinda treat him really badly." Alphys admitted.

"And I've treated Alphys very poorly myself." Mettaton confessed as he spoke up now, putting a hand on his chest and bowing his head. "My behavior towards her once she built my body was quite rotten indeed! If I spent less time looking myself over in the mirror, remarking how I'd LOVE to make love to myself, and more time just talking with Alphys, she probably wouldn't have tried to commit suicide after that issue with the Amalgamates."

"Ohhh yes. Can't forget that." Alphys sighed as she cringed. "I was stupid and foolish and...I hurt so many people by accident. I didn't THINK, I just injected Determination into monsters and...and it turned them into those THINGS. I feel awful about that. It was an awful mistake."

"So why is it you can so easily forgive her for trying to do the right thing for your race, but you can't forgive humanity for trying to defend itself from what it saw as a dangerous, soul-stealing race that looked down on humanity?" Chara inquired.

"IT WAS EASY FOR US BECAUSE SHE'S OUR FRIEND. WE KNOW HER HEART. IF YOU GET TO KNOW PEOPLE, YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THEM." Papyrus reasoned. "I'M SURE IF I'D BEEN A BIT OLDER AND HAD JUST TALKED TO THE HUMANS ALL THOSE YEARS AGO, THEN THE GREAT PAPYRUS WOULD HAVE BEEN A WONDERFUL AMBASSADOR TO HUMANS!"

"That, unfortunately, didn't happen. What DID happen was six innocent children died, and Frisk here died many times over." Chara remarked, as Frisk realized there was an opening.

"If you're going to say that what happened to the Six Souls is a big reason for why we're having this trial, shouldn't they be here along with and Mr. Asgore?"

Remiel realized this was a good idea. He cleared his throat. "Your honor, before the Prosecution calls Toriel and Asgore Dreemurr to the stand, we'd like to call upon the Six Souls to be brought to the court so they can testify as well!"

Jesus gave a small smile, Chara turning pale. "I'll allow it. The court will recess so that you can go and speak to them, and bring them here."

"You're sure they'll speak on our behalf after all we did?" Toriel wanted to know, Frisk smiling warmly back.

"I know at least ONE of them will without a doubt." Frisk said. "After all...she's my mom. And she didn't have a mean bone in her body."


	4. The Six Souls Take the Stand

Each of the Six Souls was willing to talk. Though the monsters had been concerned that none of them would testify, it had been fairly easy to find them and get them into the courtroom, and now each of them stood before the judge as he calmly looked down upon them all. Several of them cheerily waved over to the defense table, especially the teenage girl in the cowboy hat whom Frisk enthusiastically waved towards.

"Should she really be allowed to testify? She has a vested interest in protecting her son's friends." Chara spoke up, frowning darkly at the brown-haired young lass who gave Chara a deep frown.

"She did die many times over at the hands of various monsters. She has every reason to dislike them." the defense angel Remiel remarked. "Indeed, besides her son Frisk, Bonnie Hatfield-McCoy has died the most times out of all of the Six Souls. If anyone should hate the monsters for what they've done, it's her. The fact she's willing to testify on their behalf says much of her character."

"Justice often calls for mercy. And vengeance isn't justice." Bonnie said with a tip of her hat, green eyes a-glittering beneath as she gave a polite nod to the judge. "Lord Jesus. Ma and Pa sure looooved talkin' about you when I was growin' up. I'd like to think I was raised right and that I raised my boy Frisk as best I could before I went into the Underground."

"Wait, I know she's your mother, but where's your father?" Toriel's voice wafted out from the defense table as she scratched her head, Asgore nodding in agreement as Frisk flinched, and the judge quietly sighed.

"Is something the matter with him?" Asgore inquired, Bonnie slowly taking off her hat, holding it over her brown jacketed chest as the other souls gently put a hand on her shoulder or back, or held her hand to comfort her.

"My...the father of my child couldn't handle bein' TOLD he was gonna be a dad. I kinda got pregnant by accident and I couldn't bring myself to have no abortion. When he found out I was pregnant, he couldn't take it, he got all freaked out. And I didn't find out 'til later that-that..." Bonnie began to shake. She was trying to surpress tears as her voice cracked. "H-his parents found 'em in the bathtub, he'd-he'd done...done slit his wrists."

She shamefully put her hat back on, tugging it slightly down to obscure her face. "I d-didn't wanna ever tell Frisk about his poppa. I didn't want to have to today, but-but...I'm an honest woman, and you need to know. I tried to do right by Frisk as best I could, but I'd been with the families of those that lost kids to Mt. Ebott for so long, and I'd done made a promise to avenge them. I couldn't go back on that. I just...I just thought I'd be able to get back home when it was over. Didn't know I wouldn't be able to keep it."

"Yeah, Ms. Bonnie here was real good to my folks." An Asian American girl in a black karati gi, orange bandanna and tipless fighting gloves spoke up, giving a calm nod, black hair falling neatly down around her face. "To mine and Anthony's and Christa's and Neil's here. We'd all done gone down into the mountain and died, and our parents got united in grief, and Bonnie had been there for them in church, just listening to them talk, trying to help." Qiang confessed.

"I'm amazed you were able to...I mean, you're so young. When did you give birth?" Undyne had to admit, looking Bonnie over, scratching her head.

"About ten years ago."

"What, you gave birth when you were SIX?" She squawked out in surprise.

Bonnie shook her head. "No, sixteen."

A shudder ran through Undyne's body. "How long have you BEEN sixteen?"

"...a while." Bonnie confessed, cringing as she rubbed the back of her neck. "Reckon every one of us who went down into the Underground had our own little talents. Me and Neil got the closest to having what Frisk seems to have."

"Yes, the wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff." Christa Lewis spoke up, adjusting her cloudy glasses as she held open her steel-rimmed notebook and pointed down at it before realizing it wasn't large enough for everyone to see. "Oh. Um, Sans?"

 **"on it."** Sans said with a sly wink. A moment later, a gigantic chalkboard was being wheeled in by the teleporting Sans, and Christa was furiously scribbling on it as if she was a college professor educating a class. "anythin' for you, lil' lady." He remarked with a smile.

"Neil Elliot..." Christa explained, writing on the chalkboard, scribbling a VERY good chalk impersonation of the tutu-wearing blonde-haired young man in ballet shoes who was sheepishly trailing his foot around in a circle on the court floor. "Learned very early on in life he could go back in time to a certain period. He could RESET, leaping back in time! He could redo an entire hour, an entire day! Bonnie..." She began drawing Bonnie, getting all hyped up, voice getting slightly high-pitched as she excitedly kept scribbling. "Ms. Bonnie was like a living SAVE state! NOTHING hurt her. She could die over and over again but she'd pop right back to life exactly where she'd died! Because of this, she never aged nor ever got hurt, her body was always healing itself, always reverting her back to the "natural" state! And Frisk got the best of both worlds!"

Christa raced over to Frisk, pointing at him, holding up one arm as he sheepishly smiled. "Frisk, it seems, can go back in time as well, and easily heal themselves to boot through discovered "SAVE Points", as he calls them. Whenever he's truly filled with "DETERMINATION", his body can heal itself! He's tapped into the nexus of time and space!" She squealed, holding herself and shaking back and forth. "Oh, I could study this kind of thing for years and never get bored! It reminds me so much of when I went down into the Underground."

"That's right. All of you DID go down into the Underground, and did you not all die at the hands of the monsters?" Chara inquired pointedly, Christa flinching.

"In a slim majority of the timelines, it was either Mr. Gaster that did it, or Asgore." Christa sheepishly remarking, going over to the chalkboard and flipping it over, drawing a picture of a straight line that veered off into three directions. "Here. Gaster there, Asgore here, then in THIS one, I died in an accident in the lab, the same one that claimed Mr. Gaster and scattered him 'cross time and space." She remarked.

"HOW did Gaster and Asgore kill you?" Chara inquried, pacing back and forth as the other kids stood by the chalk board, Christa flinching again.

"I'd get...experimented on by Dr. Gaster. He would tell me he had to do this because monsters needed to be free, and he needed to remove my soul to see if it could help power his time travel machine." The messy brown-haired girl confessed. "And when Asgore killed me, it was because the machine we'd worked on had failed, and with Gaster claimed and the machine broken, there went the hopes of the Underground. When people had heard about it, they'd been so excited with the prospect of everything going back to how it used to be, to...to fixing the human/monster war. And with it broken, they wanted a scapegoat, and..." Christa trailed off. "...he didn't want to, he just...he just wanted his people to have hope."

"And you didn't deserve to be considered?"

"Well...the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one." Christa apologized.

"Don't humans outnumber monsters at least 100 to 1? And were not monsters going to commit genocide against a majority for their own sakes?" Chara inquired.

"Look, don't try to flip this around on her." Neil spoke up, his voice getting angry, furious. Though he looked slightly ridiculous in his tutu, there was a horrifying coldness in his tone that made everyone flinch. " **You're the worst of the lot!** You POSSESSED me to try and make me kill everyone in the Underground! You took advantage of my RESET abilities and told me the only way I could go back home, to RESET to before I fell in was to kill more and more people! You're a lying, hateful, deceitful, sad little girl in a hole in the ground who can only feel power when she's hurting others!"

She flinched at this, but her eyes got cold as ice. "And you still went along with it." Chara snapped back. "Your hands aren't clean."

"Integrity means doing the right thing at the end of the day. Owning up to what you've done. I did that and willingly let myself die." Neil insisted. "You refused to own up to anything. Yeah, the monsters haven't been owning up to their mistakes. Yeah, humans should have owned up to what they did, and them treating the existence of the monsters as just LEGEND is wrong too. But you're the last person who should be criticizing them. You're a total hypocrite, complaining about how awful humans are when you're the worst of the lot."

"You've NO idea what I had to endure at home!" Chara snarled back before a red-haired young Greek-American boy spoke up, taking off his chef's hat as he shook his head back and forth, red locks flopping about.

"But I do. I read into your diaries, and mother and father told me everything, Chara." Anthony Vardalos said. "I know they weren't there for you the way you wanted them to be. You were a Jeremy. Daddy didn't give attention to the fact that mommy didn't care. And you probably would have shot up a school if you'd stayed on the surface." He sighed, looking over at the judge. "My mom and dad had me much later in their lives, feeling they failed Chara. After all, when your daughter is muttering that she wants to stick needles in you when your'e asleep so she doesn't have to look into your eyes as she does it, you know you've failed as parent. So they tried so hard with me, and I think they did a good job."

"If you really understood what I had to endure, why do you look so down upon me?" Chara quietly asked, folding her arms over her chest.

"You're trying to have it both ways. You insist Undyne should take responsibility though she had no family of her own, and grew up, like you, with violence inside her she couldn't control, but you don't wanna take responsibility for yourself. But the thing is, you had a second chance." Anthony said, his tone soft and sad. "You found a family that cared for you. They treated you with kindness and love. And..." He shook his head, putting his chef's hat back on. "And you poisoned your dad for a joke, you lied and manipulated them, you used your adopted brother and got him killed..."

His green eyes locked onto hers.

"You had a bad life. But you had a second chance many didn't get. And you _wasted_ it. So who are you to say that the monsters don't deserve a second chance when you squandered the one you had? You're not one to talk about this."

"I don't really care. I'd rather be a hypocrite than not get anything meaningful done." Chara remarked with a snort.

"Truth be told, I kinda agree." The littlest of the souls spoke up, the young African American girl among them nodding her head as everyone gaped at her. "It's better to go against what I believe in and help someone than stick by my principles and let them get hurt. Doing right for others, doing the right thing, should always trump your personal feelings. I'm just sorry you don't really get that."

"Shouldn't you hate the monsters more than anyone else? You were defenseless when you were killed." Chara demanded of her. "And you died against Sans or outright starved to death right at the Barrier room a majority of the time."

"Oh...yes. Sans." Hope, the Soul of Patience sighed, Sans cringing. "Yeah, that...that hurt a lot."

 **"yeah, I killed her a bunch of times."** Sans sheepishly confessed. **"it was before I made my promise to Toriel. I felt awful about it, I really did."** He quietly admitted. **"i didn't like doing what I did, I was just trying to do right by my people. i just wanted Paps to see the surface. he was so young when we got sealed down, he didn't even remember it. i wanted him to...to feel the grass beneath his feet. and I woulda done anythin' to make that happen."**

"You DID do anything you could. Including child murder." Chara snipped back, Sans flinching. "He murdered you in cold blood. Doesn't your faith make you feel as though that kind of sin is unforgivable?"

"I think of myself as a good Christian, yeah, but...but I don't care. I don't care if it's being a hypocrite, I can't say what he did was right, but I don't think condemning him is right either. I got to see him every day in the lab, he'd just...just stare at the jar my soul was in and sometimes he'd just start CRYING." Hope confessed, the thin, gaunt African American girl in tattered clothing quietly hanging her head. "I couldn't hate someone like that. And the more time I spent watching him, the more I got to like and understand him. In time I started haunting him. And...that caused problems." She sheepishly admitted. "Cuz I realized that once you're tied to the monster that killed you or had the strongest connection to you when you died, then...you kinda are stuck followin' them around. So I was with them EVERYWHERE."

"...wait, seriously?!" Alphys asked, mouth agape. "D-Does that mean you-"

 **"bro? can you roll the clips?"** Sans sheepishly asked of Gaster as the tall skeleton nodded and everyone stepped back, Christa cleaning the chalkboard so he could play out the scenes Sans wanted, Sans sheepishly blushing as he sat, very, VERY naked, in a bathtub, with a rubber ducky on the side. He was using the lab's cleaning suite, since it had a larger tub and of course, the rubber ducky that Alphys had gotten from the dump.

 _ **"singin' in the bathtuuuub! with a neat refrain! watchin' all the bubbles! go a-swimmin' down the drain, a-la-la-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-la!"**_ Sans sang out, washing away between his ribs with a bar of soap. "singin' in the soap suuuuds! life is fulla hope! you can sing with feelin' as your feelin' for the soap."

THWOOP! The soap slipped through his grip and shot through his ribcage and out of the bathtub as he cringed, reaching over the edge of the tub with bubbles all about, struggling to get hold of the soap. Almost had it...almost...

But he was so squeaky clean that he flopped right out of the tub, unmistakable giggling filling the air as he shot up, turning around...seeing Hope was sitting on the nearby toilet, giggling as she covered her mouth with her hands, her spectral form laughing uproariously.

"I see your hiiiiney! All white and shiiiiney!" She proclaimed, Sans gaping in shock as he rose up, walking over to her, passing a hand through her head, the skeletal bones going through as easily as it went through a beam of sunlight. "Hey. You stop that. It feels all weird and tingly."

 **"h-how long have you been there!?"** Sans sheepishly asked, a visble blush coming to his cheeks.

"Long enough." Hope said, looking down below. "...lemme guess!"

"OH NO. OH, PLEASE, DON'T, NO-" Papyrus began to say, Sans covering his mouth, giggling madly as he knew EXACTLY what Hope was about to say, the dirty little girl.

"Ladies and dogs love you for the same reason. _Cuz you always got a BONE ready for 'em!_ " Hope's ghost giggled out.

Fifteen baliffs that rushed into the courthouse and a command from Jesus Christ himself couldn't restore order in the court.


	5. Free Will or Fated

Being forced to exit the courtroom and wait for the judge to finish speaking with the Six Souls about avoiding future naughty moments, promising he wanted to "have a little TALK with the prosecution", our poor, long-suffering protagonists of this Undertale were now waiting in someplace they hadn't expected to be…the enormous library of Heaven itself. Immense Grecian pillars of the "Ionic" style held up a large roof with a circular glass frame high above that allowed all to see outside, much like the court. The floors were a beautiful shade of ivory just like the pearly walls, and golden bookshelves lined up and down the library aisles, seeming to stretch on forever as an immense fountain laid in the center. From that fountain burbled a never-ending stream of what appeared to be fine wine, bubbling up from an angel holding up a gigantic bowl.

And, of course their defense lawyer had several large wooden cups for them to partake of it.

"Oh, no, I don't drink." Toriel had insisted as they and the many, many people in the gallery in the courtroom looked about Heaven's library, Toriel shaking her head as she looked over a book she'd taken off a shelf that read "A History of Snails". "And I sincerely hope you're not offering any to Frisk. They are underage."

"Relax." Remiel smiled gently, giving a cup to Frisk as they sipped it. "It's impossible to get drunk in Heaven. And if children drink of it, it tastes like grape juice."

 **"guess that might have annoyed Chara. cuz they always talked about enjoying wine. that brat liked to act like she was so much more adult than the actual adults."** Sans muttered as he sipped on some wine himself, an idea slowly coming to him as Gaster was fiddling around with the nearby bubbly, soapy water from ANOTHER fountain close by which people could use to bathe in, many monsters already enjoying themselves. The horse/merman monster named Aaron was leaning back in the fountain/pool, his faintly turtle-esque friend Woshua cheerily bouncing up and down, a big grin on his face.

"Clean! SOOO clean."

"They were truly right. Cleanliness IS next to Godlliness. Literally." Aaron wisecracked with a sigh, his soft and bouncy mane swaying left and right as he flexed before the women and men watching on, Sans tapping their lawyer on the shoulder.

"You enjoying your time relaxing a bit? I've no idea if you'll get to enjoy this in the future." Remiel sheepishly admitted, the brown-haired angel rubbing the back of his neck. "…well, actually, I DO, but there's several possible ways it could play out. And they're not all good."

 **"kinda actually wanted to talk to you about that. shouldn't I get a little leeway from the big G for stoppin' a genocidal brat that would have destroyed the world?"** Sans asked, everyone suddenly realizing what Sans was asking as they turned to look at him, Remiel looking very, VERY uncomfortable as he bit into his lip. **"think about it. That kid was gonna kill everyone, and there's plenty of times I stopped 'em. shouldn't I or Undyne or all of us that stopped 'em from getting that far get a little considerat-"**

"There's not one timeline where they succeed in destroying the world." Remiel finally blurted out.

Gasps. Shocked stares. Sans dropped his drink on the floor, Toriel whipping her head in the angel's direction so hard she almost got whiplash as Undyne furiously stormed over, Papyrus cringing as she lifted the angel up, glaring into his face with her one good eye. "What?! DID?! **YOU?! JUST** **SAY?!** "

"Chara was possessing Frisk." Remiel said as Frisk nervously approached her, tugging on her black t-shirt, Undyne putting the angel down with a "harrumph" onto the shiny white floor as their lawyer shook his head back and forth. "She's a demonic little girl, true. But she was possessing the body of a ten year old Asian American boy armed only with a knife. What exactly do you expect her to be able to do?"

"Uh…well…" Undyne stammered a bit. "…but…I mean…she slew Asgore in a single hit!"

"So? That means very little. She'd never get into the White House to get launch codes or anything like that. She'd not even make it past a nuclear reactor facility's security. While there's many timelines where, after destroying your Underground, she went on to wage horrific serial murders in towns near Mount Ebott, there's not one timeline where she actually destroys all of humanity. Humans cannot absorb human souls, so she couldn't use the Six Souls to become an all-powerful godly being. And all she had was a knife. 9 times out of 10, she'd be taken out in a hail of SWAT team gunfire who got calls about a crazed Asian American child stabbing people in a mall. And the rest, she'd get killed in a bloody crossfire of National Guard troops unleashing all they had."

"Yeah. I might be from New England but even I know that the cops wouldn't go as easy on me as they would a little white boy." Frisk admitted nervously. "We advanced pretty far since Chara fell back in 2012, but not THAT far."

 **"you mean to tell me that we essentially die for NOTHING?!"** Sans gaped, mouth wide, now getting furious. **"that…that she wasn't even a big threat to humans cuz they have things like guns?! is that seriously what you're saying?"**

"You could maybe dodge a spear or two or three, but good luck trying to dodge a hail of gunfire. Even your Gaster Blasters take a few moments to charge up." Remiel apologized sadly. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to tell you that, but it's the truth."

Sans slumped down against the fountain, covering his face with his hands, slowly shaking it back and forth. **"all that effort…and it woulda meant crap, cuz she would get her head blown off in ten minutes by some trigger happy cop. i can't even…I just…"** he muttered out between his bony digits.

"Everything happens for a reason. But the reason isn't always good." Remiel apologized as Undyne gave him a dark look.

"If you and your kind exist, why did you never come and help us?! Why did none of you ever try to-"

"We don't interfere with what your kind does anymore. We did much of that in the olden days, but the world is different now. It's like dealing with teenagers compared to children. We're giving people space to handle their own problems because we expect you to be able to handle them. We cannot hold people's hands forever. We expect them to make the right choices and when they don't, to live with the consequences." Remiel apologized. "If we interfered every time something terrible happened, then you'd never learn to do the right thing on your own."

"You can't understand how it feels. You might be an angel, but your kind are so much like humans. You're not our peers. You don't know what-" Alphys began to say, stammering slightly before her eyes went wide. "Wait! That's it! Why can't we get a jury of our peers?! They'd go easy on us in a trial!"

"Well, the problem with that is that the Prosecution gets to pick who the exact jury members would be. Jesus broached the idea and said he'd be fine with an all-monster Jury provided they weren't from your exact timeline." Remiel admitted as he motioned with his hand and led them over to an immense set of double doors close to the courtroom, the front doors of what appeared to be a large house. "They had to be different enough to be those who could understand what you went through, but...not COMPLETELY the same. And so Chara had a large Jury pool to select members from."

He opened the door, and everyone stared in shock. For there, before their eyes, was a sea of Sanses. Oh sure, there were many Papyrus, almost as many as Sans. There were quite a few Gasters as well, and Asgores, Undynes, Toriels, Alphyses. So, so many different versions of themselves. But the Sanses seemed to utterly outnumber them all, and all of them were so vibrant and colorful and different, some beautiful and dazzling to behold, some soft and loving in how they came across, others twisted, their faces cold and cruel, eyes filled with a lack of mercy. Sans cringed as they looked at him, and one with pure black bones and symbols stretched across his visage chuckled, his eye a mocking blend of yellow and red, as tiny blue strings seemed to be wrapped around his yellow fingers, a dark red shirt like blood under his jacket.

"Welly welly well. Whadda we got here? Our original timeline?"

"Looks like a survivor of one of MY runs." Said a Sans in a jacket with…

Sans choked up. He was wearing Paps's scarf around his neck, a gigantic red slash mark on his chest, and half of his face looked…GONE. Glitched away. **"wh-what…d-don't tell me…"**

"Yeah. The kid gave all in my realm a a bad time." This Sans sighed. "Name's Geno Sans. See you've met Error Sans. He's…not as nice as I am. And I'm not that nice a guy."

"We're all f—kin' hypocrites." Said a cold-looking Sans with a golden tooth, a dark jacket and a sneer on his face. His body seemed jaggy and sharp as his fanged maw, and it looked like he was wearing spiked knuckles on his hands. "Rotten to the core. Judging everyone but ourselves. Well…until the big G approached us. And he might just let us be our own judge, jury and executioner."

"We all have a…lot of hate towards ourselves." A decidedly draconic figure remarked, Sans recognizing his own voice as a bony dragon walked towards them, barely fitting into his blue jacket, his head obviously resembling the "Gaster Blaster" he used. "Underfell Sans is right on that. But in some cases its matched only by our hatred for those around us. I can barely feel much of anything but hate for Gaster, who did THIS to me." He said, pointing at himself. "He wanted to make us weapons to blast the barrier open and hurt humans."

"I WOULD HAVE FELT IT AN HONOR FOR A HUMAN TO DIE AT THE HANDS OF THE GREAT PAPYRUS!" A black-armored, dark-scarfed wearing Papyrus proclaimed, his maw also fanged, his gloves clawed as he cackled before hanging his head and looking at Frisk. "THEN I LEARNED THAT HUMANS FEEL AN EVEN BETTER HONOR IS HOLDING MY HAND. AND, UM…MASSAGING MY BICEPS WITH A FLOATING HEART."

"Perfectly understandable." Said a Gaster with floating hands hovering behind him, his eyes a-glittering with purple light as he looked the defendants over, scribbling down notes on a notepad. "My, my, my. We could spend an eternity analyzing all of you."

"You look lonely." Frisk said softly, Gaster halting in place as his face seemed to freeze and he slowly slunk back. "…a LOT of you look lonely."

"You always have a way of cutting right through to us." The GasterBlaster Gaster sighed, hanging his head as another Gaster in a large white labcoat with his head alit with "Lost Soul" flames strode forward, a notepad in one hand, his face utterly obscured by the white, pixelly flame as he tapped a pen to his "chin", they supposed. Then he motioned for them to follow him as he led them into the hall and towards a large chalkboard in the back.

"There's something you need to know." He explained quietly. "There's someone else the Prosecution could call upon. Even if you don't want us involved as a jury, Chara will undoubtedly make use of us as proof of how…TWISTED we monsters are, deep down. Of how awful we've behaved towards each other. I myself t…t-tortured." He murmured quietly. "I did unspeakable things in the name of breaking monsters free from the Underground. I'm just one of many examples Chara will bring forth to prove Monsters can, would be, and are, as bad as humans if given the chance and the right tools. Perhaps even worse. After all, Error Sans wants to wipe out entire timelines."

Error Sans gave a cold, pitiless smile. "Does that BOTHER you, Handplates?"

"I don't enjoy my work like you do." The labcoat-wearing Gaster snarled back, his body shaking with pure fury. "You DELIGHT in your work."

"Who's the other person you're talking of?" Asgore inquired, and Sans noticed the king was utterly dejected, his face solemn and quiet and sad as he stared at the labcoat-wearing, head-obscured Gaster.

"They are called "The Third"." Handplates Gaster sighed, taking a cigarette out of his pocket before remembering smoking, like drinking, was pointless in Heaven. Bad habits were hard to break. Instead he played around with a lighter, flicking it open and closed, a tiny little flame popping up and down. "Chara says they're proof positive in showing how Frisk is utterly innocent and it's you who deserve the punishment. They might not like Frisk much, but if the choice is letting Frisk walk and taking all of you down…they'll go for it. Even if it means they cannot claim Frisk as well."

"Who is this Third?" Asgore asked softly. "What are they like?"

"We've not met them." Geno Sans muttered. "Chara said we did, just…not directly. No idea what the hell that means." He sighed, sticking his hands in his pockets and kicking the floor. "Probably some other controlling force, I'd wager. A sinister being lurking in the shadows, toying with us. The Devil himself, for all I know."

…

…

…

…not…exactly.

"State your screenname for the record."

"ProJared."

"MisterEbony."

"The Spoony One."

"Markiplier."

"…my name's Nick. Nicholas Michael Grey. If I'm gonna be up here, they might as well know my real, full name. Not some screenname to hide behind."

They couldn't believe it. The Third was not one, but **several** humans. Some with large noses, some well-dressed, others sloppily so. Some with soft faces, others looking slightly amused at everything in a snarky way. And all…ALL had one thing in common.

"So, we led Frisk through the Ruins…"

"Naturally, I killed everything in my path."

"I took waaaay too much candy."

"And of course, I wiggled for Moldsmal."

"I didn't know snails flipped their digestive systems!"

"Toriel died. I mean, she WAS kidnapping me. I'm like, ten. What did she expect?"

"Didn't expect that whoopee cushion gag."

"I found the skeleton to be…SANS-Sational. Guess he's a bad influence on me."

And so they watched as these random humans all spoke of guiding Frisk, leading him through the Underground. One had slaughtered everyone. Two others had killed nobody. And the last had said he experimented, sometimes killing almost everyone, other times the figure of mercy.

And as more and more of what they had to say went on, Chara's smile grew bigger and bigger before, at least, she ended the questioning, turning to Jesus and asking a simple question.

"How can Frisk be blamed when the one who chose to let me into them…was these Players? All of the Third Ones made their choices. And these choices had disastrous consequences for the Underground. If anyone should be blamed, its them and the monsters. They for their poor behavior they had Frisk do…and the Monsters for what they did that led them down into the Underground, and for trying time and time again to kill Frisk."

Sans cringed. It looked bad. If these…PLAYERS…could only control Frisk, then that seemed to mean that Frisk would have been swept up in a stream, helpless, unable to do anything. But they, the monsters, could have chosen. They could have chosen not to attack. To show Mercy. Yet…they hadn't. The same way the Players had.

But one of the Players looked nervous. The one who'd identified his full name, Nick, looked like he wanted to say something, but Chara's face was dark and cold, hauntingly gazing right into his hazel green eyes.

But Sans knew how to get through to him. He'd noticed the kid had begun talking a mile a minute when addressing the issue of timelines.

"It's just AMAZING." The young man had said. "I mean, I had no idea there were so many of these! It's just fascinating, like, I could spend a hundred lifetimes learning about them all and wanting to explore those Undergrounds. There's so much I'd want to do, even if…even if it wouldn't mean anything, I'd still want to try."

That had given Sans pause. The kid clearly had so much more to say. And so soon Sans was whispering a question into their lawyer's ear as Remiel nodded, approaching Nick.

"Nick, tell me. What do you know about…time?"

"Time's not like a big railroad track. Christa talked before about how it's like a river that kinda branches off?" Nick admitted. "…it, um…reminded me of…of the Multiverse theory. The idea that every single choice you make creates a kind of alternate dimension. We'd choose to have Frisk do this one thing and it'd make this one timeline, we'd choose Frisk to NOT do the thing, it'd make another. But the thing is, that…that kinda KILLS the idea of free will, doesn't it?" He asked, Chara looking puzzled.

"How so?" The Judge gently inquired.

"Well…if every single choice we make created a new reality, then what does it matter if you make a choice that saved the world or doomed it? There's so many of them created from Frisk's choices we had them do that…" Nick rubbed the back of his neck, his face flush with embarrassment. "That it doesn't matter. Now you could say it matters in this ONE timeline, in the one world he's in…but does it? Because not only are all HIS choices scripted out for him…"

Chara's eyes went wide. "Wait, no-"

"But so is everyone else's. Chara can't help but appear to Frisk when we've killed everyone. Sans can't help being in the judgment hall. Paps can't help but hold back. Everyone's choices are already all set out for them, already made, an INFINITE number of choices being made. So it destroys the idea of free will. If all these choices are already being made a million times over, nothing matters. And yet…"

Nick hesitated, and his voice got quiet. "…I couldn't bring myself to go full Genocide because…every time I worked through Frisk, I kept thinking "I should act the way I would act". And I would never, EVER wanna really hurt anyone. It didn't matter if the choices were phony, it…FELT wrong to do bad things. It spoke to something in my soul. I mean, you learn a lot about people from how they play a game. You learn who you are in the dark, when you think there are no consequences. So…I couldn't bring myself to finish Sans." He said.

And in that instant, Sans knew. He KNEW that this human had been the one controlling Frisk moments before he'd been slain by Flowey. He knew this was the one. He could see it in his soft eyes as the kid brushed some of his brown hair back.

"Maybe none of the choices all of us make here matter. Not one bit. But I wanted to still act right even if I thought there'd be no consequences. Because how would I like it if that was how it was for MY life? That's all I could think about. How awful it would be if someone was just manipulating me, and if I had no choice in anything I did. And I kinda…feel bad for Chara. They're always fated to be rotten kids who hate humans. Always fated to die horribly, eating buttercups."

Chara poisonously looked away, arms folded over his chest as Nick looked at the monsters. "So I'm sorry. I don't know how much of what we do is meant to happen, and how much of it is your choice and we're just…like…acting out what's happening. I don't know how much of what we do is us playing you…or you playing through us. But I know that what I felt for all of you, that…that IS real. If something can reach me on that kind of emotional level, then…then it's real. Cuz real isn't how you're made…it's what happens to you."

Silence in the courtroom for a long…long time. And then…

"Has the defense anything to add?"

"…no." Their lawyer said quietly, looking over at Asgore, seeing him smiling happily, wiping tears from his eyes. "Whatever is the matter?"

"The whole time I was here, I felt like I didn't even deserve to be within ten feet of its golen gates. And now, hearing someone…someone DOES care about us, I…I finally feel like I actually belong up here." He admitted softly.

"…I'm calling a recess before I pass my judgment after taking your final statements." Jesus said gently. "…think long and hard about what you have to say. Both sides." He insisted. "I will be just and fair. But being so does not mean there will be no punishment, for there is some room for that." The judge added quietly.

They all nodded, and slowly left the court, thinking long and hard about what had just been said. Long and hard about choices. How much of what they did WAS of their own free will? How much of any of it was? If they'd had free rein, would they have done the same thing?

There were no easy answers.


	6. Judgment

_" I have noticed that even people who claim everything is predetermined and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."_

 _Stephen Hawking, 1993._

"Tell me what you'd change about yourself."

The judge had asked, for the final statements, to hear the defendants to speak one on one with him. It had been a bit of a surprise to everyone, but after everything else...they felt they could handle this. There was just one rule. "Don't lie". Not even a little bit.

"Watch. I'll demonstrate for you." Jesus had said softly as he cleared his throat. "I never kissed Mary once."

But as he spoke those words, loud, furious ringing of bells echoed through the courtroom, Asgore nervously looking up, hands behind his back as he slightly hung his crowned head. "..I, um...I see."

"You try. Go ahead."

"I, um...I...don't miss Toriel at all."

VERY loud bell ringing. It was almost utterly drowning out every single word he said as the judge visibly flinched, slightly covering his ears as Asgore sighed slightly, rubbing the back of his neck, apologetically looking up. "My, um...my apologies, sir."

"Please, do not stand on ceremony, Asgore. Just be honest with me. What would you change about yourself?"

Asgore wrung his hands, his golden/brown bearded face wracked with guilt as he spoke up. "Looking back, all those years ago, I realize that one thing in my life has remained consistent. I have anger issues. Problems controlling my rage. I think it may have been passed on from my father. Without even trying to...I became him. If I had just learned to control my fury, maybe those children wouldn't be dead. Maybe my wife would still be with me. Perhaps none of this would be happening. But it isn't just that."

His eyes fell to the floor. "I would speak in private to Toriel about what we would do when it came to the humans. We wanted to go the surface. To ask Chara a great responsibility. We had no idea that a human and a monster could just...walk out together if they wanted. So the question became...could...could we ask Chara to die for our sake? To let me or my wife absorb her soul so as to pass through the barrier, to find sympathetic humans who would try and aid our cause? She was so young. We didn't know how to tell her." He held his head in his hands, shaking slightly. "I...and I know she heard me one night. Whispering in the kitchen to Toriel, fearful of how to talk to her about this. All I can think is "That made her turn on us". It made her decide she couldn't trust us, I was always sure of that. If I'd just been HONEST and OPEN and just thought about it calmly, I-I..."

He finally hung his head.

The judge quietly listened, his face soft and gentle. And he nodded soothingly.

"I know everyone expects me to do so much, but...I get so easily overwhlemed. And things spiral out of control." Alphys said, shaking her head back and forth, tail slightly wrapped around her legs as she cringed, adjusting her glasses a little. "I panic and I make dumb mistakes and worst of all, I...I was going to do something cowardly."

"It's not ALWAYS the cowardly choice. For whatever it may be worth to you, I want you to know that I would not hate you if you'd chosen to make that choice." Jesus had softly insisted. "Please, don't think I would."

"I should have just been honest with everyone from the start. If I'd done that, I wouldn't have panicked and freaked out and almost made that choice. And I should never have experimented with Determination. I was just so desperate. Maybe if I'd done more tests." Alphys wondered aloud, pacing back and forth, green eyes a-glittering beneath her glasses. "Or tried to look through Gaster's notes or...oh, how could I FORGET him!?" She moaned, holding her head again, shaking it back and forth. "He was one of my only friends! Why didn't I test the machine's safety locks?! We were all so caught up in it working we never bothered to see if it was safe enough! We did, like, ONE test! How could we have been so stupid?"

The judge quietly listened, his face soft and gentle. And he nodded soothingly.

"How could I have been so stupid. To not notice how hurt Alphys was for so long. I coudln't see her, all I saw was MYSELF." Mettaton murmured as he held his head with one hand, biting his lip, majestic body slumped slightly as he prostrated himself before Jesus. "She even commited SUICIDE multiple times in different dimensions! And I didn't notice it one bit! I'm supposed to be her friend, but all I did was take advantage of her! You wanna know what I'd change about me? What WOULDN'T I change?!"

He smacked his chest, cringing. "I didn't like being a woman. I didn't like being a ghost. I wanted to be a human. A man. A sexy hunk! And Alphys made me this wonderful body and what did I do? Barely a pat on the head!" He groaned, covering his beautifully, divinely-sculpted face with his smooth hands. "And I would have and DID murder a child again and again not because I really cared about humanity, but because I wanted to be a star in the human world. I cared more about the fame and the fortune than actually helping people. And Napstablook. Dear Blooky." His lip quivered. "...Blooky and I were the only ones left on our family's farm. We didn't have anyone but each other and then he had nobody when I left him behind. I never even once asked him if he even wanted to come."

The judge quietly listened, his face soft and gentle. And he nodded soothingly.

"I...I killed a kid. A bunch of kids. A...bunch of times. Like, a **bunchy** bunch." Undyne sheepishly confessed, head slammed into the desk at the court, red hair flopped over her blue skull. "...I mean I was smirking as his body slid down my spear. What in the Hell is wrong with me?!"

She then cringed, looking up, some locks of hair in her mouth, some other locks blocking the view out of her yellow eye. "Sorry, I...I shouldn't swear in front of Jesus Christ. Actually, it's kinda funny." She admitted. "We have a LOT of Christian fiction down in the Underground. Like, five thousand copies of the "Left Behind" books and films. Not even including the one with Nicholas Cage. I guess that means people REALLY don't like them that much. Does that ever bother you?"

"I'm not going to have my children force their beliefs on others any more than I wish for them to force others to do the right thing. If you make someone do what is right at the barrel of a gun, or for the sake of reward, it defeats the very purpose of doing good." Jesus calmly remarked, evidently writing down something in a notepad he had. "That's not what I'm about."

"But you evidently ARE about doodling in the ground when people wanna talk to you about prostitutes. What were you drawing?" Undyne found herself asking. "Cuz...well, I've read the Bible. That part ALWAYS stood out the most. All I could think was "Wait. This angry mob of maybe hundreds has gathered up a prostitute and they're gonna kill her, and you're scribbling in the ground. What was it you were drawing that was so important?"

"I actually have quite a talent for art." The judge confessed, holding up the small notebook he was using. "My favorite thing to draw."

"...the sunrise?" Undyne asked, blinking slowly. "Why's that?"

"New beginnings. A new day, a new dawn. A fresh start. The morning is Life's reboot button. Like pushing "Reset". And what of you?"

"...I kinda like the sunset. It's not just dramatic, it's...thoughtful." Undyne admitted as she rose up and looked out the window, her tone becoming softer and quieter. "It makes you think about the day you've had as you look out at endless beauty and so many lovely colors. It's contemplative and dramatic and meaningful. It's looking back on what came before. And I guess...I did a bit too much of that. I let the past and what happened to our race consume me. I cared more about old grudges than moving forward."

The judge quietly listened, his face soft and gentle. And he nodded soothingly.

"I wish I had stayed." Toriel quietly admitted, looking down and away from him, her face solemn and sad, trying to surpress tears. "...if I had stayed, I could have calmed the storm inside him. And had I spoken to Chara about what we wanted, I think I could have reached her. I made awful mistakes. And I blame myself so much." She murmured. "I've known my husband had issues with his temper. I saw that before we married. I saw it in the war. You probably know about this, but..."

Toriel cringed. Her eyes became clouded with memory. "My husband didn't just lose his father, he lost his brother who had been away in what you know as the Holy Land. His brother Mosbur had DIED there, at the hands of humans, and it had enraged his father so much that he turned into a...a BEAST on the battlefield. And Asgore didn't even like that about his father but then when he saw him die on the field of battle, he snapped. He stuck his trident through the father of the 7th Magician. Right through his face. Impaled him right before the child." Toriel said, shuddering in disgust, remebering the spray of blood that had billowed forth, the splattering of fore on the trident and her husband's robes, the cute, button-nosed face of the young Prince of the Human Kingdom she'd known so well now horrified as his father's brains splattered across his very chest. "Anger took so much away."

Jesus nodded. "I know. I knew of Mosbur. My own descendant, who took my brother's name, was very close to him. James had nothing but nice things to say about him, except for the fact that Mosbur kept secrets far too much." He sighed, hanging his own head. "He waited until the last minute to admit to my descendant of what was going on with his father. And by that time there would be no stopping either King Bergen or Asgore."

"And oftentimes I've wondered...why didn't I just destroy the exit to the ruins?" Toriel admitted. "I guess in a way, I...part of me always kept hoping that one day the problem would solve itself. That I'd hear the barrier was down, and I could leave and walk happily in the sun. I was so cowardly. It would have taken me all of five minutes to destroy the Ruins door, and keep any child from ever falling into the Underground. After all, all the other entrances had either long-since been sealed up, or only led into lava or other horrific places." She sighed. "...or perhaps I didn't do it because I wanted to convince the children to stay with me willingly. To keep the offer to leave there so they'd know it was a choice, but...would choose to reject leaving the Underground and to just stay with me. Because if I'd destroyed the Ruins door, they would have had little choice but to love me and stay with me in my home." Toriel realized aloud. "...and I didn't want that. I wanted them to love me."

The judge quietly listened, his face soft and gentle. And he nodded soothingly.

 **"heya, Paps."** Sans said, getting lifted off the ground, and wonderfully embraced by the soft yet firm feel of his bony brother, Papyrus nuzzling up against his hoodie-wearing lil' Sans.

"SANS, YOU NEED NOT FEAR. I'VE SPOKEN TO THE JUDGE. AND I HAVE NO DOUBT YOU WILL ALL BE FOUND "NOT GUILTY"! IF YOU DID, I SURELY COULD NOT LIVE WITH MYSELF." Papyrus remarked aloud. "...THEN AGAIN, I AM DEAD. SO THAT WOULD BE A UNIQUE SCHRODINGER'S CAT OF A PROBLEM." He confessed, putting Sans down and scratching his head.

 **"and I'm gettin' the feeling you wanna tell me more."** Sans admitted, shuffling his slippers-wearing feet.

"I WISH I COULD TELL YOU WHAT HE WILL SAY, FOR ALL IN HEAVEN KNOW OF THE FUTURE AND THE PAST AND THE PRESENT, BUT BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY TIMELINES, SO MANY POSSIBILITIES..." Papyrus's head spun around and around and around before he snatched it with his gloved hands, holding it in place. "HOO! IT MAKES MY HEAD SPIN." He confessed. "JUST BE HONEST WITH THE JUDGE. ALL WILL BE WELL." He insisted, leaving the court, and leaving Sans alone with faint cloudy dust motes and the judge, as Jesus leaned back in his chair, holding up his notepad.

"Do you like it?" He asked, showing off a sketch. "It's your brother...as a porpoise. I love them!"

 **"it's really cute."** Sans admitted, admiring the smoothness of the sketch as he rubbed his chin. **"but look, I gotta be honest. bein' honest? not really my thing. i keep so many secrets it gets hard to tell what part of my life is true."** Sans sighed, still giving that wry smile on his bony features.

"Try." Jesus offered, gesturing with a hand as Sans cleared his breath. "What would you change about yourself?"

 **"i'm a lazy coward who hides behind the fact that reality jumps about as an excuse for not doing anything. there were plenty of times I could have stopped Chara's rampage, but I always was either dragging my feet or too scared to do a damn thing. how much of that is laziness and how much of that's nihilism, I dunno."** Sans shrugged. **"...but I think I'm a pretty rotten guy. gave up on fixing the machine to get Gaster back before Alphys did. gave up on seeing the surface. and I hide behind a smile and jokes cuz I feel I have to."**

He began to chuckle. **"my whole life has felt like one bad joke. so...so when I look at all of it, I HAVE to laugh, y'know! i HAVE to laugh! because...because...when you're confronted with a rotten situation, then ya got...you got two options. y-you either laugh or you cry. and-and laughter's nature's anesthesia, right?"**

And now the chuckles became shudders. And something gently plopped on the floor below.

 _ **"...because tears hurt too much."**_ He managed to croak out.

The judge quietly listened, his face soft and gentle. And he nodded soothingly. "I understand."

 **"look. i KNOW it's selfish. i KNOW it's a lot to ask. but...I don't wanna be apart from Paps. he's all I really got. but at the same time, I-I don't think i deserve to be up here after everything I've done. i really don't know if I've earned it. i just...i just want it to stop."** he whispered. **"i want to stop feeling like I've got no choice in any of this. i want to feel like a difference is gettin' made. even if it means I won't be happy, I...please. please at least let my friends be happy."** He finally managed to get out, sinking to his knees, covering his head, shaking his head back and forth. _**"...please..."**_

And then he was being gently lifted up, Jesus's soft face gazing back, holding his bony hands.

"It's alright. And I'll tell you what I told all the others. Have you made the right choice? The best choice? What really mattered to me...was that you were honest with yourself. And you were." He said tenderly.

A pull into a soft embrace, like a blanket being wrapped around him. And then...

...the rest...

was silence.

...

...

...

...As she pushed another set of doors open, the young African American breathed in deep, long, tall, dead trees lining a long stone pathway through a snowy woods. Her deep brown eyes gazed around the silent forest as she passed by an immense stone, blanket wrapped around her as she hummed a bit, continuing down the path as the wind blew a bit harshly around her.

Seeing a wooden bridge up ahead, Hope Williams moved towards it, noticing a lamp nearby, combined with what appeared to be a small little wooden outpost that had snow lining its roof. But before she could move forward past the outpost, a voice rang out, deep, faintly echoing, the snow around her feet whipping up as she huddled beneath the blanket.

 **"...hey. you...a human?"**

"H-Hello?" Hope called out, looking around for the owner of a voice that sounded so, SO familiar. And then...out of the forest he came, a mug of hot chocolate in his hand, a smile on his face.

He KNEW it.

 **"hello, Hope."** Sans said, his smile warm and genuine. **"...I think we got a lot to talk about. hope you don't mind that it took me this long to show up."**

"Well...I'm pretty patient." Hope said with a small little Mona Lisa smile. "I didn't mind the wait...you BONEHEAD."

 _"Free will is the modus operandi of Destiny."_

 _C.S Lewis, 1947._


	7. EXTRA: We, Tem Jury, Find the Defendants

**And now, because I am both very philosophically-minded AND incredibly immature at the same time, I present to you a more "happier" alternate ending. Don't be afraid to leave a comment, even if you wanna complain or have a criticism. I made this story to make people think a bit, reach people on a kind of emotional level, and do a new kind of Undertale story not really done much, if at all.**

 **Enjoy:)**

* * *

"Wait...seriously?"

The idea was almost too ludicrous to be believed. But it made sense. Sort of.

"I'm serious. We ask for a jury of our peers. Our fellow monsters." Alphys reasoned as she held up a small snazzy metal clipboard as everyone sat in the library, the defense team all crowded around her as Undyne folded her arms over her chest and "harrumphed".

"Uh-uh. I ain't havin' any of those...those PSYCHO-SANSES being on the jury." She muttered out, glancing away, pouting visibly, a fluster on her fishy face. "And that's who Chara would pick!"

"The rules say we can't pick people directly related to us, but because they're alternate versions of us, the rules concerning them are more fluid and less fixed." Alphys reasoned, jabbing her pen at the notepad, shaking her head back and forth. "But we don't have to ask for them. We can request that the jury pool Chara has accumulated be thrown out because even though they're alternate versions of us, they're all, still, at their core, US." The dinosaur-esque scientist insisted to her friends as they all looked about at each other.

"She has a point." Toriel admitted. "I've spoken to my...Underfell associate. She still has my kind of sense of humor, albeit slightly darker. And her desire to want to show mercy towards children still lingers on, despite everything."

"My over protective nature concerning my child and my temper problems are still vibrantly apparent the more of me...that I see." King Asgore sheepishly confessed, the "Goat Dad" tapping his pointer fingers together and shamefully hanging his head.

 **"pretty much all of the Sans I meet got one helluva sense of humor, and a love of fart jokes. they just never get old to any of us. no matter who I talk to."** Sans confessed with a shrug. **"and no matter how we act on the surface, deep down we...we all still love Papyrus."**

"Ahh, and Papyrus is still a sucker for anyone who can make spaghetti, isn't he?" Undyne reasoned as the others all chuckled and sniggered a bit, picturing a Handplated Papyrus offering Spaghetti to a stunned Dr. Gaster.

"And no matter what version of me I meet...I'm still grappling with my cowardice." Alphys quietly confessed, everyone quickly shutting up. "I mean, my Underfell counterpart built a huge-ass mech suit and...and I'M the one confronting Frisk at the end to keep them from leaving, not Mettaton. Though TECHNICALLY it is, cuz...um...I, uh..." She began to trail off. "...I make some extra adjustments."

"Which reminds me, darling...I know realize why I'm always saying "Ohhh yess"." Mettaton intoned, blushing himself on his robotic, well-built face. "It harkens back to my days when you were crafting this form. And lingering, I might add, upon my finesly shaped rear. Don't get me wrong, it's VERY, VERY nice, but...you spent a liiiiittle too long staring directly at it."

"It, um...it wans't like I was creeping on you mid-construction!" Alphys quickly stammered out, shaking her head back and forth, almost dropping the snazzy metal clipboard she had in her clawed paws, Mettaton tapping the side of his head even as a bell faintly rang through the air.

"I have the video footage."

"Crud." Alphys moaned as their lawyer looked over the metal clipboard for himself. "Well? What do you think?"

"...I BELIEVE I could swing this by JC and Chara by presenting the argument that for the jury to be truly of your peers AND clear of all potential bias, it'd have to be a bunch of monsters with pretty much no true attachment to any of you. And perhaps, to satisfy Chara, with a liking of humans. There's only one monster with that many numbers up here in Heaven who'd fit the bill perfectly." Remiel confessed as the archangel lawyer gave the clipboard back to Alphys. "While none of you "Boss Monsters" got in and most of the population was okay with the destruction of humanity, there were actually a couple of exceptions. We weren't sure at first on letting them in because Papyrus had at least done more good...but St. Peter is very much a cat person, and he just couldn't turn them away."

"Wait..." Toriel's lips pursed as her eyes slightly widened. "...are you, pray tell, truly saying that our best shot at our innocence is...? Alphys, do you mean to tell me that we are putting our fate in the hands of..."

...

...

...

..."Sir, we present to you our simple argument." Remiel said as he paced back and forth in front of the judge. "Despite the fact that we would have faith in you delivering fair judgment, we have a fundamental belief in the right to a jury of our peers. And whilst the prosecution wants to employ alternate versions of the defendants as a jury, I would argue he simply can't. The right of the accused is to be judged by a jury of their peers, but the would-be jury isn't really a jury of peers...they're almost palette swaps of the defense with slightly more tragic backstories. So I say this. If you want to justly try the defense, then I say this..."

He pointed at the empty jury box, his eyes glinting like green emeralds, his face resolute and firm.

"Then you **PACK THAT JURY BOX WITH CATS.** And if you're looking for historical precedent sir, than I present to you that this is in concordance with the Springfield Litigation "Play it By Ear" Act." Remiel added with a cheery smile and a wink.

Well, needless to say, it worked. Within a single day, the entire jury box was filled with a host of white-furred, black-hair-atop-their-fuzzy-wuzzy-heads cats with yellow and green long-sleeve shirts over their little boddies and adorable white faces. "Hoi! I'm Temmie!" They all proclaimed at once, the Head Juror waiting for them to finish waving at Frisk, who nervously waved back, Jesus taking notice of one of the jurors in particular.

"Do you, perchance, have to excuse yourself, my child?"

"It's okay. Tem just bit allergic to Tem." She said, sighing, red bumpy dots all over her body as she winced. "Will get some cweam later."

"We've been looking over the evidence, we heard all the arguments when we were watching from the gallery, and we've deliberated long and hard, good sir." Bob, the Head Juror intoned, calmly placing his little pawsies together and giving the judge a polite nod. "And we have, at last, reached a verdict."

"And what do you find?" The judge asked, Chara "harrumphing" as he looked away, folding his arms over his chest as he glanced over at a blue mushroom who gave him a dark look from the galleria, for he had lived a life of SIN.

"We, the Jury, find the defendants...not guilty of all charges. We pronounce them innocent." Bob said with a deep flourish as Alphys cheerily hollered and whooped, hopping into Undyne's arms, smiling broadly.

"Imma gonna KISS this fish!" She proclaimed, planting one right on Undyne's lips, making her plop onto the ground, laughing uproariously as Asgore lifted a nervous-looking Toriel up as she slightly blushed, Gaster smiling warmly over at Sans, Papyrus standing nearby as he clasped his gloved hands together and happily bounced about.

"OH, YES, YES, YES! HUZZAH FOR MY WISE BRETHREN!"

"Wow, that's wonderful!" Frisk said as he clasped his hands together and then ran over to give Sans a big hug, Sans eagerly returning the hug with a soft smile. "We did it, Sans! We did it!"

 **"awwww. i had a feelin' we'd come out just fine. now c'mon. let me take you out for ice cream."**

"Darling, it's all MY treat. I mean, I make more money in a day than you do all year."

 **"yep. let's be honest. I'm always so full of cheer cuz I really only work one day a year."** Sans laughed, looking up at the jury box before he noticed quite a few of them were now...staring at them. Kinda creepily. As creepy Latin chanting seemed to fill the air.

 _ **Koyanisquanti...**_

 _ **Koyanisquanti...**_

"Hey! People! Like, less than half of us are really giving the Evil Eye here! And TEM!"

The Temmie with the hives gulped a bit, rubbing the back of her neck as Bob pointed at her. "You're giving sad eye!"

"It's all Tem know!"

"I don't believe that. Now come on! One! Two!"

THIS time all of them were now really giving the defense table the stink-eye, everyone in the gallery flinching in unison along with them as Jesus cringed at the sight of VERY angry-looking Tems, all of them looking like the Defense was going to paaaaaaaaay.

 _ **Koyanisquanti...**_

 _ **Koyanisquanti...**_

"Um...is...is there a problem?" Remiel nervously asked, their lawyer sheepishly smiling.

"You see, sir, the jury DID choose to inflict additional charges. Though blatantly unconstituional in AMERICA and frowned upon in all fifty states, since you're not really FROM the USA nor are we IN it, you're not subject to it's particular constitutional protections for this." Bob added. "Defendant number one! Mettaton!"

"Um...y-yes?" Mettaton asked, gulping slightly as Bob pointed pointedly at him.

"We find YOU guilty of condescenion, price gouging your ice cream, sexual harassment of your Mettaton Grill employee Burgerpants, and bribing the Nice Cream Guy with kisses five times in exchange for all his Nice Cream! Defendant number two! Alphys!"

Alphys "eeped", visibly shrinking in her lab coat as Undyne held her up as best she could in her arms.

"We find YOU guilty of unwanted sexual advances, and unwanted sexual contact of an unconcious ghost when he was still having his body built around him, which we WOULD have counted as rape, but since he technically didn't have all of a body, we couldn't make that charge stick. We find you also guilty of piracy, having illegally downloaded every single episode of Fullmetal Alchemist for your friend Dr. Gaster, and cover crinkling! A shame on EVERY comic book fan! Defendant number three, Undyne?!"

"What?!" Undyne snapped.

"We find YOU guilty of calling anime "nerdy crap", saying "Mad Magazine" was "comic book", and calling Alphys's lab 'the nerd nook' and giving Jerry wedgies. The fact he doesn't wear CLOTHES made this all the more impressive, and might have impressed us enough to go EASY on you until we remembered that you had argued that Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2 was "just as good" as the first!"

Alphys let out a horrified gasp, her paws flying to her mouth, Undyne letting her go as she reeled back. **"Who ARE you, Undyne?!"** She murmured in horror.

"Defendant number four! ASGORE!" Bob, Head Juror went on, Asgore gulping as he nervously kneaded over his hands. "We find YOU guilty of naming "Batman and Robin" as your favorite super hero movie, letting your son Asriel watch "Man of Steel", using a trident without a license, and many, MANY counts of animal cruelty towards snails! A charge shared with defendant number five, Ms. Toriel!"

Toriel winched. "Um...er, is that all?"

"Oh, no. We also find you guilty of several counts of kidnapping of minors! All things considered, you're getting off REALLY easy. Not so Defendant number six...Sans."

Sans gulped slightly as the Temmies unfurled a very, VERY long roll of paper and began to read off an endless array of "Temmie Jokes."

"What is a Temmie's favorite food? TEMMIE-PURA. Don't worry, the Barrier is only TEMMIE-PORARY. You guys must be filled with DETEMMIENATION. Your favorite song must be "Temmie-thy, Temmie-thy, where on Earth did you goooo"! And when we eat too much we get a TEMMIE-ACHE!" Bob furiously snarled out, practically spitting as Sans sank nervously in his seat at the defense table, Chara grinning broadly from the other side of the court. "HARASSMENT. TEN! THOUSAND! CHARGES! AAAAAND! Sneaking that DOG into our village one night cuz you thought it would be "funny"!" He hollered. "And crashing your car into our village wall, so we can add a charge of drinking and driving! Defendant number seven!"

Frisk sighed as he stepped forward. "Yes?"

"Unfortunately, you're a minor. So nothing we charge you with would stick. Not that we really have that much on you beyond **hustling** so you could get yourself some Temmie Armor." Bob remarked with a shrug. "But for the rest of you, and these crimes against Monsterkind and the Temmie Tribe, we sentence you all..."

His face grinned darkly.

 _"TO PUBLIC HANGING!"_

...

...

...

... "Well. Didn't expect THIS."

Forced to stand erect on tiny wooden poles embedded in the wall, Undyne cringed as she held up a sign along with Alphys. They'd moved up her poles so she could be on an equal wall level to her beloved, her and her friends all stuck hanging up gigantic banners and signs at Comic-Con 2052, a host of humans passing in and out of the doorway below them, one of them in "Mew-Mew Kissy Cutie" attire, complete with fake ears and a fuzzy tail as her friend, dressed as the sexy Captain Harlock, stood nearby, noticing the t-shirt Alphys wore underneath her lab coat.

"So you're into the show too?" She asked, looking over the sign the two were hanging up, which read "These Two Women Acquitted of Murder Would Like To Welcome You to Comic Con 2056". "And wow, your friend there is, like, REALLY pretty."

"Really?" Undyne asked, blushing a bit.

"Yeah, your hair, like, GLOWS in the convention hall light. You here with your honey too?" She asked, putting her arm around her friend.

"Aww, isn't young love adorable?" Toriel asked, holding up a sign along with Asgore on the opposite wall for the "Star Wars" section of Comic Con, giving Sans a look as he stood on his wooden posts just to their left, giggling slightly. "What's so funny?" She asked, him having to hold up the "Star Trek" welcome sign with Mettaton, who didn't mind that various people kept climbing up ladders to get to him so he could sign things. Although he had, in fact, asked Chris Pine to climb up and sign his tushy.

Hey, it was Chris Pine. The latest Captain Kirk. How could he say no?

"Your sign oughta read "May the Divorce Be With You"." Sans laughed, Asgore giving him a look as people milled in and out of the doorways they were all hanging over. "And HOO, is it hot in here. It's all these convention floodlights, I tell you."

"It is a bit...humid." Mettaton remarked, shrugging slightly as he did a pose for a fan who took a photograph of him. Evidently people thought he looked just like a robotic David Bowie. "Ahh, but it makes my body glisten with synthetic sweat and look all the more rugged."

"Yeah, well, I dunno about you, but me? I'm takin' off my pants." Sans said, pointing at his shorts and reaching down.

Everyone froze as a dark grey pair of shorts slowly drifted down like a gentle snowflake to the floor below.

 _"...ohhhhhhh yesssss."_ Mettaton exclaimed, eyes bugging out wide.


End file.
